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Motion of a Solitonic Vortex in the BEC-BCS Crossover

Mark J. H. Ku, Wenjie Ji, Biswaroop Mukherjee, Elmer Guardado-Sanchez, Lawrence W. Cheuk, Tarik Yefsah, and Martin W. Zwierlein
Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 065301 – Published 4 August 2014
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Abstract

We observe a long-lived solitary wave in a superfluid Fermi gas of Li6 atoms after phase imprinting. Tomographic imaging reveals the excitation to be a solitonic vortex, oriented transverse to the long axis of the cigar-shaped atom cloud. The precessional motion of the vortex is directly observed, and its period is measured as a function of the chemical potential in the BEC-BCS crossover. The long period and the correspondingly large ratio of the inertial to the bare mass of the vortex are in good agreement with estimates based on superfluid hydrodynamics that we derive here using the known equation of state in the BEC-BCS crossover.

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  • Received 27 February 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.065301

© 2014 American Physical Society

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Solitons with a Twist

Published 4 August 2014

Two independent groups have shown that certain defects in superfluids can be identified as solitonic vortices.

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Authors & Affiliations

Mark J. H. Ku, Wenjie Ji, Biswaroop Mukherjee, Elmer Guardado-Sanchez, Lawrence W. Cheuk, Tarik Yefsah, and Martin W. Zwierlein

  • MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, and Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

See Also

Observation of Solitonic Vortices in Bose-Einstein Condensates

Simone Donadello, Simone Serafini, Marek Tylutki, Lev P. Pitaevskii, Franco Dalfovo, Giacomo Lamporesi, and Gabriele Ferrari
Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 065302 (2014)

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Vol. 113, Iss. 6 — 8 August 2014

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